


But He Loves You

by peacefrog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Demon!Dean, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve been here before, Dean’s life in Cas’ hands, but this time it is different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But He Loves You

They’ve been here before, Dean’s life in Cas’ hands, but this time it is different. This time Cas is himself, and Dean is the one out of control. He has become a monster, impossible to contain, cure, stop. For months it looked as if the human blood injections they had been giving him were doing the trick. He was hunting again, saving people, taking care of himself for the most part. He was his old self again, despite the Mark of Cain remaining on his arm.

They kept the blade locked up in a storage facility two states over. He still had cravings to wield it, but his demonic soul was now strong enough to resist. With the human blood acting as a bandage, it was as close to his former self as he was going to get until they found a way to cure a demon who also happened to have the Mark.

But two weeks ago something changed. Dean just snapped one morning at breakfast, throwing his cereal bowl across the room. It shattered mere inches from Sam’s head, who had simply suggested that Dean stay behind while he and Cas went out and worked a case together. Cas was living as a human these days, he too being kept alive and well by way of a temporary fix, some ancient angelic spell that Hannah managed to dig up for him in Heaven. He had only a glimmer of grace left inside, but the spell worked to keep it from burning out any more if he didn’t use any of his powers, keeping him alive in the process.

Where Cas was okay with his bandage, Dean clearly no longer was. He disappeared after the incident at breakfast, and Cas and Sam worked night and day trying to track him down. Meanwhile, Hannah agreed to help Cas by scouring every dusty old corner upstairs for a way to cure Dean when they found him. Three days ago she returned with an answer… but it wasn’t a cure. She had found a way to kill a Knight of Hell with the Mark of Cain without having to wield the first blade.

“It’s a spell,” she said. “We have to go to Heaven and cast it on an angel blade. Only the caster can wield the blade to kill the Knight, and the blow has to go straight through their heart.”

Sam refused to listen to this solution, refused to even consider killing his brother, but two nights ago they managed to track down Dean’s location, and what he had done was enough to shake Sam to his core. Dean had been spotted by a surveillance camera at a storage facility in Peoria. He finally managed to track down where Sam had stashed the blade, a location he had kept secret from everyone other than himself and Cas. When the man wouldn’t give Dean access to the locker where the blade was located, Dean choked the life out of him and stole his keys.

After retrieving the blade, Dean killed the only two other employees working the late shift, and went out for a night on the town. A rash of murders cropped up in Peoria that same night, mostly men that had been beheaded outside of seedy bars. They were certain it had to be Dean. So, reluctantly, Cas went with Hannah to Heaven, cast the spell, and returned to Earth where he and Sam made their way to Peoria.

They find him quickly. It’s almost as if he wants to be caught, figuring nothing they can throw at him is actually going to kill him. Once he’s securely shackled and bound inside a devil’s trap, inside an abandoned warehouse, Cas asks Sam to leave them.

“Sam, you don’t need to see this.” Cas holds the blade in his hand. Sam’s eyes flicker down to it before he turns and walks away.

When Cas turns back to face Dean, a wicked grin is plastered across his face. “Hey Cas, miss me?” 

Cas doesn’t say a word, stepping closer, averting his gaze as much as he can manage.

“You know that thing’s not gonna work on me, right?” Dean motions to the blade.

“It will now,” Cas says somberly. He tries to detach himself from the situation as much as he possibly can, using every last ounce of willpower to not look Dean in the eyes, afraid of what he’ll see if he does.

“Bullshit.”

“Hannah found a spell,” is all he manages to say as he examines the blade in his hand.

“Oh, Hannah. She’s cute. Think I’ll sink my blade into her nice and slow after you let me go.”

“I’m not letting you go, Dean.”

“Yes you are. And you wanna know why, Cas?”

“No, not particularly.” Cas keeps his eyes fixed on the ground, the blade, Dean’s shoes. Anywhere but his eyes.

“Because you love me.” 

Cas says nothing, turning away from Dean and taking several steps toward the door. He stops in his tracks, turning the blade over in his hand, closing his eyes, trying to steady his breathing. He collects himself, blinks back the sting of tears and slips his stoic mask back on before turning around again.

“Admit it, angel. You love me,” Dean says, as Cas once again moves closer.

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

“No, but it’s not in the way Sam loves me, is it? You’re _in_ love with me.” The way Dean says it, it’s not a question. He knows, and there’s no use in denying it. So he doesn’t. Instead he stays silent once more.

He tries his best to appear emotionless, but inside he’s certain he is dying. Dean may be a demon now, but this is still the same man he raised from perdition. The same man he died for, gave everything for. This is the same man who taught him about free will and family. The first human he felt connected to. The first and only one he has ever shed a tear for. Dean made him feel, despite his nature, despite what he was created for. Dean Winchester is the man he fell for, in every sense of the word, and now he has to sink a blade into his heart.

“This isn’t you,” Cas says, finally.

“No, it is. This is all me, man. Look me in my eyes, Cas. Look at me.”

Cas folds. Dean’s tone isn’t taunting or teasing. It’s soft and warm and inviting. It’s as if a switch has been flipped and he’s not a snapping, snarling demon any longer. He just sounds like _Dean_.

Slowly Cas flicks his eyes up from the ground to meet Dean’s gaze. He expects for a moment to see deep, black nothing staring back at him. Instead he’s met with those big, sparkling, hazel green eyes he knows so well.

“That’s it. Hey.” Dean’s tone somehow softens even more, voice bordering on a whisper.

“Dean…” Cas can’t bring himself to look away now.

“Remember that night in the library right after I got back?” 

Of course Cas remembers. He’s pretty certain if he lives another million years, the memory will be as fresh as the night it happened. They drank an entire bottle of scotch, and laughed so much over some ancient tome that Cas’ belly ached for two whole days after.

“You wanted to kiss me that night, didn’t you?” 

He did, of course he did. Sitting side-by-side, passing a bottle back and forth, Dean just kept smiling at him and it would have been so easy to lean in and press their drunken mouths together.

Dean cocks his head, a pensive smile playing on his lips. “I wanted you to kiss me.” 

“Don’t…” Cas averts his gaze again. Dean sounds so genuine, so sincere. He has to remind himself that demons are masters of manipulation.

“Cas, it’s me,” Dean says, gentle tone unwavering, looking every bit himself as he did before he allowed an archangel’s curse to take over his body. “Look, I’m fine now, okay. I’m fine. Let me show you exactly what I wanted you to do to me in the library. We can figure all this out later.”

Cas almost bursts out laughing. This is too cruel to actually be happening. There’s no way to get rid of the mark, no way to cure him as long as that’s a factor, seemingly no way to bring Dean back to himself at all. But here he is, bound to a chair inside a devil’s trap, with his very human eyes shining, and promises of working it out on his lips.

“You’re unpredictable, Dean. Out of control. You were fine for months and now look what you’ve done.” Cas is staring at him again, trying to make his face unreadable, emotionless, but he feels like Dean can read his mind when he looks at him this way.

Dean shifts in his chair, as much as he can being bound by his wrists and ankles with demonic handcuffs, with a heavy iron collar around his neck. “It’s passed now, Cas. I just need some more of Sammy’s blood. Come on, buddy. We can find a way to get rid of the mark, you can hide the blade where I’ll never find it. Throw it back in the ocean.”

“Dean, there is no way to get rid of the mark. I doubt even Lucifer himself could erase it. We found nothing in Heaven or on Earth. I’m sorry… I have no other choice.”

“You won’t do it,” Dean assures him. “You can’t. I know I couldn’t do this to you if the roles were reversed. Do you wanna know why?”

No, Cas thinks. He doesn’t want to know. This is impossible enough without Dean staring into the very essence of him, appearing and sounding as if not a trace of demonhood remains inside.

“It’s because I love you, too, Cas.”

He feels like he’s been impaled, or stabbed right through the heart. He looks down at the blade in his hand to make sure it’s still there and not lodged in his chest. He pretends he didn’t hear him, or that his words aren’t boring a hole in the very center of him so big he doesn’t understand how he’s still upright.

“What do you propose I do? Let you go so you can hurt more people? So you can hurt yourself? The Dean I know wouldn’t want to live this way.” 

He wonders if he’s dead. He wonders if the spell keeping him alive had an expiration date, or if the last of his grace fizzled out. He wonders if he became human a split second before death and his soul landed in Hell. This feels worse than dying. Like hellfire and the worst sort of torture he can imagine. Perhaps he’s gone mad again, and this is all a figment of his fractured mind. He closes his eyes and prays to his long lost father that this is the case. When he opens them again, Dean is still there in front of him, and he knows that this is real.

“The Dean you know is sitting right in front of you, Cas.” 

He’s right. He is. All Cas can see is laughter in an alleyway. A goodbye in a brilliant flash of white. A quiet moment on a park bench. The gentle brush of fingers against his own. Three words whispered in a crypt. Cas can’t see a monster, despite what he has done. All he can see is Dean.

For a moment he tries to will himself to end it. He figures he can put the blade through Dean’s heart, then his own, faster than he can live to regret it. Life thinking Dean was dead all those months ago was hard enough. He could never live knowing he was the one who took Dean’s life away.

He steps forward, until the toes of Dean’s boots are right up against his own. He looks down at him, and the blade falls from his hand.

“I can’t,” Cas chokes out. The blade clatters against the concrete.

“Kiss me,” Dean says. 

“Dean…” Cas feels like he’s drowning, floating. Too heavy to move, and weightless all at once.

“You don’t have to free me, Cas. Just kiss me.”

He’s imagined this moment a thousand times, but now that it’s here he can’t move, can’t breathe. He just stares at Dean, slacked jawed and wide eyed, so many thoughts in his head he feels dizzy. Then suddenly, his body is moving. He goes from standing toe-to-toe with Dean, to kneeling between his legs. Slowly he brings his hands up to cradle his face, and just like that they’re kissing. 

The taste of Dean’s mouth isn’t at all what he imagined. Brimming with sulfur, he is reminded for a moment that although Dean’s eyes are once again sparkling with humanity, he is still very much a demon. But his lips are pillowy soft, and he’s moaning into his mouth, and it just feels so good he allows himself to forget that the world is crashing down around him. 

But it’s not enough. He wants to feel Dean’s hands on him. He knows he’s being careless, foolish, but logic went out the window the moment he dropped to his knees where he stood. Without giving it another thought he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the keys, and begins unlocking Dean’s shackles. They don’t speak, their labored breathing the only sound between them. He removes Dean’s collar last, and once he is free, Dean’s hands are on Cas in an instant.

The only thing keeping Dean from fleeing is the devil’s trap beneath them. It also happens to be the only thing keeping him from taking Dean somewhere warm and soft. Somewhere he can taste every inch of his flesh while they try to figure this all out together. He breaks away for a moment, bending down and scratching the paint with his pocketknife just enough to render it useless.

Dean’s kissing him again, their bodies pressed tightly together as soon as he turns back around. It happens so quickly it doesn’t even register at first. He only had his back turned for a second or two, but the sharp pain radiating out from the center of him lets him know that was long enough for Dean to slide the angel blade up his sleeve. Dean’s mouth is still on his when the blade pierces his heart, gleaming silver buried right between his ribs. 

The last thing he sees before the world goes dark is Dean pulling away from the kiss, his hazel green eyes flashing black.


End file.
